AIDS quilt display aims to raise awareness at Palomar

Palomar College student Adriana Valencia takes note of a name on a portion of the AIDS quilt on display at the school's library Tuesday. The quilt will be on display during library hours though Friday.
— Bill Wechter / UT San Diego

Palomar College student Adriana Valencia takes note of a name on a portion of the AIDS quilt on display at the school's library Tuesday. The quilt will be on display during library hours though Friday.
— Bill Wechter / UT San Diego

SAN MARCOS  It’s been nearly 30 years since the height of the AIDS epidemic and today’s college students might not know much about it. To raise that awareness, a portion of the AIDS memorial quilt is on display this week at Palomar College.

“Young people and students that come to our campus, most of them don’t even know anything about the AIDS memorial quilt,” said Palomar math professor Monika Brannick, adding that it’s the second time a portion of the quilt has been on display at the college. “I think we still need to make progress when it comes to HIV and AIDS, and I think it’s important to AIDS awareness and (to) make students understand that safe sex is extremely important.”

According to the AIDS quilt website, the quilt was conceived in November 1985 by longtime San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones. He created the first panel for the quilt in memory of a friend, and in 1987 he helped organize the NAMES Project Foundation, the organization in charge of the quilt. The foundation uses the quilt to foster healing, increase knowledge and inspire action in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Today the quilt consists of more than 48,000 individual 3-by-6-foot memorial panels sewn together by friends, partners and family members.

Since 1987, more than 14 million people have visited portions of the quilt at thousands of displays worldwide, helping the foundation raise more than $3 million for AIDS service organizations throughout North America.

The quilt display at Palomar is hosted by Palomar College Health Services and Palomar College LGBTQ Pride Center and sponsored by Vista Community Clinic. It can be viewed during library hours, from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. today and Thursday and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday. In addition to the display, a series of events is also planned, including a showing of the 2012 documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, from 2 to 4 p.m. today in room O-13, a reception with refreshments from 5 to 7 p.m. today in the second floor lobby of the library, and a symposium, “I Don’t Live with HIV, It Lives with Me: Women’s Stories” from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Thursday in room MD-157.

Among the tributes to people lost to AIDS emblazoned on the quilt panel at Palomar is a poem for San Diego-based actor, writer and director James Carl Manley, who died in 1988 at age 37.

“We can’t express the love and feelings we had and still have for you. ... No more suffering. You’ll always be in our hearts,” the poem, written by his niece Sasha Manley, reads in part.

Patricia Elmore Costa, founder of the San Diego Actors Theatre, often collaborated with Manley in the ’80s.

“He was creative, talented, intelligent, (and) funny,” she recalled in a phone interview Tuesday. “He was a young, handsome guy and I really miss him.”